Identity
by vinnie2757
Summary: The best kept secrets are held in the hands of the ones you least expect.


**Title: **Identity.

**Fandom: **_Hetalia: Axis Powers_

**Author: ** Me

**Genre:** Friendship, Angst (I guess)

**Pairing: **None. FrUK bromance I suppose.

**Rating: **K+

**Warnings:** Language. Some other stuff.

**Summary: **The best kept secrets are held in the hands of the ones you least expect.

**A/N: **Oh fuck, please don't hate me.

**Identity**

"_I am not this body. I am in this body, and this is part of my incarnation and I honor it but that isn't who I am_."

Ram Dass

Arthur doesn't much remember the earliest days of his childhood; in fact, he doesn't much remember anything before 41AD, and even then it was a little hazy, memories warped by foreign words rather than the clearer, crispier memories of his own hand. He doesn't much remember the battles or the pottery or the lay of the land. He doesn't much remember that.

He just remembers that there was something seriously wrong.

(Some many years later, when he meets Prussia for the first time, Gilbert tells him all about this nation further to the east that had been convinced she was a guy until puberty started. Arthur fidgets, and changes the subject. She had it lucky, he thinks, and talks about the weather.)

It starts niggling at the back of his mind when he first sees his people fighting. The Celts are amazing people, he thinks, even in 2012, he is acutely aware of how powerful a people they really were, the kind of power that's been lost from the world when it comes to rely too much on technology. He remembers seeing his mother fall under Rome, and he remembers the horrible, sinking feeling that came with being under another nation's rule.

But for the longest time, he shrugged it off, too new to the world and too interested in all the flora, fauna and supernatural to pay much attention to the feeling that something was off. So what if he felt a little uncomfortable surrounded by his warriors, standing tall and proud with their skin painted and beaten gold about their throats? So what if he was small enough to be denied access to the humans fights? So what if he's a little smaller than the human boys his physical age? His brothers have been saying he's the runt of the family since he first met them.

It doesn't take long for that feeling to come back in full force, to make itself known and really screw with his head.

He's not much older than he had been on invasion, but Boadicea is taking a stand, she's rallying the troops and whetting her blade, and Arthur is ready to join her.

Boadicea stops him, tells him no, tells him that it's too dangerous, and for the time it takes him to catch up to the devastation, he doesn't understand, but then he sees, and he understands and he can't turn that feeling off any more. It's there to stay.

He's in the wrong body. He's always known it of course, but it's not until he sees what happened, sees the ravaged and destroyed bodies that he understands why Boadicea was so desperate to keep him out of it. Being a woman – a girl – is dangerous. She'd known that the best, and she'd known that her nation, her beautiful, tiny, invaded little nation was in danger. Before she died, in her bed with a sickness Arthur had no name for, he told her that he wasn't a little girl. She said that she knew, she'd never seen him as anything other than the very definition of the fight in her nation. She told him that safety lay in masculinity, and told him to wind bandages around his chest, to layer up and cover himself, to be the man she knew him to be.

When she died, and Rome took control once again, Arthur paid a visit to his brothers, and asked whether Boadicea had been right in her advice. Scotland had laughed in his face, but declared himself proud of his little brother. It was the first time Scotland had acknowledge their familial bond, and to have called him brother and not sister meant more, perhaps, than the acknowledgement itself. Scotland helped him wrap bandages around his chest, though he was young enough not to need it. Better to start early, Scotland had said. So you can get used to it, and get the practice in for when it starts to matter.

(Hungary grew up and grew out of the phase. France asked when England would do the same. England denied his biological gender, though it served no purpose, France had known for centuries.)

It started to matter early in ten-hundreds. Francis was prancing around in Westminster, and Arthur was expected to present himself before his new king. France came to see him hours before the ceremony, and told him that though Francis himself knew, his lord did not. England didn't have to ask what Francis knew that his king didn't, because it was pretty fucking obvious what he was referring to. He helped Arthur tie off the bandages and arranged his robes to hide the creases, and then Arthur draws himself up to his full height (he reaches Francis' shoulder, a trend that will continue until the last sixteen-hundreds, where he will reach Francis' nose and stay at that height for the rest of the millennium) and copies the older French nation's stride as best he can.

William never finds out, which suits Britain just fine. From Christmas Day 1066 through to 2012, France takes on the duty of securing the knots, laces and Velcro straps. England doesn't ask him too – doesn't want him to, even, because it involves extended contact with the prick and he'd really rather avoid that – but he is grateful for it. Francis doesn't pry too much, doesn't question it.

(More importantly, after the first break in his nose, he stops trying to get into bed with him, and that's possibly the nicest thing he ever does for him. He still tries to strip him when he gets drunk, convinced he is still stuck in his Victorian era, and England just raises his voice until Switzerland takes notice and starts firing warning shots dangerously close to Francis' eyeballs, and that's the end of that. If Vash thinks anything of it other than British stuffiness and French perverseness, he says nothing.)

The thirteen-hundreds come, and Arthur stops wearing bandages, his skin raw and bleeding with Plague and chafing both. It doesn't much matter, there's no one around long enough to really notice. France notices, the few times they meet in those dark days, but he doesn't say anything. England appreciates his silence more than the aid.

He pretends that it doesn't matter, that he's okay with the way thing are, that this is simply his lot in life and there is very little he can do about it. He can't magically change what form his body takes, though the monster lurking deep and ugly in the very darkest parts of him begs to differ, tries to claw its way free and tear apart the very heavens that made it. He hurts, and sometimes his best is not good enough and his cover is blown and of all the things they could do to him, it's the feminine pronoun when discussing him that hurts the most.

1558 and Elizabeth takes the throne. He sees Boadicea in her, but she doesn't much see it herself. She is made of strength and fire, and as they are formally introduced for the first time, England greeting her as England, rather than one of the court, he thinks she sees through him. 1572 and Elizabeth summons him to her bath. He protests, and she laughs at him. She has no concern around him, no hesitance and no discomfort. He admires that about her, but straightens his shoulders, raises his chin, ignores the wetness of the back of her fingers on his jaw.

'So smooth,' she says to him, and his stomach churns. Over a thousand years, and not once has his monarch seen him undressed. Not his religious leader, not his royalty, not even his people. For over a thousand years, the only living creature not the fauna or the Fae to see him in any state of undress was France. 'How old are you, my darling, darling Britannia?'

'I've lost count, your Majesty,' he replies, and she runs her fingers down his neck.

'I mean physically,' she adds, and raises a pale, nigh-on invisible eyebrow.

'Seventeen, milady.'

'Seventeen? Then you are a man, are you not?'

He swallows thickly. 'I am your nation; I am not anything more, nor anything less.'

'You're hedging.'

'May I be excused?'

'Take off your clothes.'

She won the argument, because it was not in a nation's mentality to deny their monarch without the backing of their people, and his people were too entirely enamoured with this fierce Virgin Queen. She runs her hands over his ribs, where the skin is still rough, callused and marred. He closes his eyes, breathes through his mouth, rolls his shoulders forward only for her to push them back.

'My darling,' she breathes, and she's taller than him by a solid inch, steps into him to press their brows together. 'All this time, and you did not think to tell me?'

'It isn't important,' Arthur tells her. His throat feels tight, but he bites the words out anyway. She has seen him, she knows. There is nothing to do but continue as always. 'It doesn't change the nature of my relationship with you, doesn't affect the nature of my being. It is a physical imperfection at best, a flaw in your God's design.'

She draws back, his hands in hers, and frowns at him. He tries to keep his gaze level, but his eyes are warm. 'Come my kingdom, my lion. You cannot lie to me.'

Arthur digs his nails into the back of her hands, and she responds in kind. He is biting back tears, biting back harsh actions and harsher words, and though he knows she would – will – take it, he cannot bring himself to hurt her, to raise his voice and his hand against her for his own flaws.

'Bathe with me,' she says, and pulls him to her. He goes, too willing and too small, and in the morning, she says nothing, treats him no different. Her punches still bruise and her words still cut, and her eyes are not softer by any form.

She takes the knowledge with her to her grave, and he visits every day he can for several years before days become weeks, become months, become years. He visits her every year on that day, and thanks her quietly. Her ghost laughs at him and runs the back of her fingers down his jaw, whisper 'so smooth' in his ear and disappear, leaving him alone once more.

(Hungary's wearing a dress now, and Arthur's stride is lengthening by the day, slouch developing and he doesn't know why he does that. He watches her sweep around a ballroom and cracks the joints of his shoulders, straightening up and asking her to dance. He thinks he should probably cultivate a personal friendship with her, but he's trying too hard not to breathe too hard or step on her toes to remember. Her feet are tiny, his not much bigger. She must notice.)

After Elizabeth he is more careful. He pays close attention to the court and to the streets, practices until dropping his voice is second nature, until high emotion becomes something of a farce and hysteria blocks his throat. He inches his collars higher, tightens his bandages until France catches him trying to pull his ribs back into place. Within fourteen hours, he might as well not have bothered constricting his breathing at all, his ribs are as wide as ever and his body back to normal.

Until Victoria, he gives his monarchs nothing to suspect. Victoria is an accident; she is simply too – too – _Victoria_ to not find out even if it was by sheer coincidence that she happened across him in nothing but breeches with France rewinding his bandages whilst they're in the middle of an argument about corsets. France remains convinced that Arthur should just do as his men were and wear a corset because nobody would know the difference, and Arthur was arguing that it was quite simply the stupidest thing the Frenchman had ever suggested.

As with Elizabeth before her, she treats him no differently, though there is a peculiar kind of tenderness in the way she holds his arm that makes him sick to the stomach. When Elizabeth II took the throne, Arthur had pulled her to one side and told her. She had smiled and patted his cheek.

'I know,' she'd said. 'But don't worry, I'm working on it.'

He hadn't known what to make of that, and didn't spend too long dwelling on it, far too proud of her to wonder what she could be working on that would benefit him in a biological manner.

(Prussia tells him about how he found out Hungary was a girl. England draws his knees to his chest and pretends to be interested. Prussia never looks too closely, but he's not an idiot.)

Until the Crusades, thoughts of gender hadn't really mattered to him. As far as he was concerned, he was male, and gave no one a reason to think otherwise. He brawled and cursed and developed bad habits with the best of them, picked fights with men much bigger than him just to prove he _could_. And nobody had thought to call his bluff, his clothes too padded and his feet too light, a young boy amongst thousands, a nation separated from the others by enough water that he was never in danger of someone crossing his borders undetected.

When it begins to matter, he only has a strip of cotton bandaging and a bottle of piss-poor alcohol. He is bitter, angry, hurt, even, that it was beginning to matter to him. But he was thirteen now, and when he stood before a mirror alone in his house, stark naked with eyes scratched raw and the crescent-moons of his nails pock-marking his thighs, there was no denying it.

He's a woman.

Sometimes he would stand there for hours at a time, watch the light shift on his skin and beg the Fae that tried to pull him away to change him, make his brain match his biology, align everything and make it right. They told him with their patient, quiet little whispers that they couldn't. They could create an illusion, but when all was said and done, Arthur was of the earth, and it was only the earth that would be able to change him, and she had made her mind up a thousand years ago.

England curses them out, hurls obscenities and proclaims hatred, breaks something for the sake of breaking it and cries himself to sleep.

(Later, he drinks himself into oblivion, pumps his veins full of sedative, fills his lungs with smoke. He trusts France to keep him out of trouble. The Frenchman mostly succeeds.)

The sixteen-eighties, and Britain stands with his head soaking wet and France rubbing his hand in warm, wide circles on his back, pausing occasionally to tug his bindings straight again. America is asleep upstairs, and Arthur came extremely close to fainting.

'Careful,' Francis warns, and runs his hand through Arthur's hair. 'Don't straighten up too fast. You'll just make yourself dizzy again.'

'Hey, you know what?'

'What?'

'How about you fuck off and leave me alone? I don't need your help.'

Francis gives him a shit-eating grin and fidgets with the bindings again. England grumbles at him to leave them alone, but then Francis says, 'And what if America wakes? What then, kitten? How many times can you convince him that you are injured before he begins to doubt that – or asks to take care of you himself?'

England exhales. 'Fuck you,' he says, because there is simply nothing else to say.

There's a day when he almost tells Hungary. His whole body aches, the world shifting around him, Empire falling away, and he feels hollow, empty, filled to the brim and he can't breathe, his head swims. He sits in a chair, buries his head in his arms and breathes, struggles to right his world as it rotates on its axis, crumbles to dust and gets blown away. America had been fidgeting, wanting to make it better but not knowing how, and England had heard the far too familiar sound of Francis slapping the boy's hands, and silently thanks him. He doesn't want to be touched right now, he wants to be a million miles away from here, away from this room, away from these people, away from the sounds and sights and smells of war and death and victory.

He sits there for several long minutes before finding Hungary in the crowd and quietly keeping track of her. He pulls her over when she passes close enough, all of his fingers around one of hers. She looks at him in surprise and crouches at his feet. She looks incredibly concerned, and he searches her face for the last traces of masculinity and finds nothing.

'Are you alright?'

'Yes,' he says. His heart is pounding. 'I'm fine.' The last word cracks, and he swallows. 'I'm sorry.'

Hungary searches his face with the same kind of expression he's sure he had worn when he searched hers. He thinks she's figured it out. She opens her mouth, but instead sighs and rocks up to plant a kiss in his hair and promise to go and get Francis to take him home.

On the worst days, he sits in his pyjamas in front of a floor length mirror, toes bent up against the glass, knees against his chest, and searches his face. The flying mint-coloured bunny that has accompanied him all his life – the name of whom he still does not know, having never asked for it and it never being offered – will always sit with him, not understanding his need to watch his face, but keeping him company all the same. He tries to see himself how the others see him, and tries to see himself without knowing what is hidden behind his knees and red plaid.

He sees round eyes and high cheekbones, bruised with an unending ache for sleep, and a little wonky, the left cheekbone broken in a drunken brawl in the fifteen-forties that never got set right. He spends one rainy afternoon counting his eyelashes. He doesn't know what the normal number is, but it doesn't seem to him like he has too many. They aren't particularly long. Scotland has long eyelashes, he thinks, France too. His eyebrows are dark, far darker than his hair, and thick, too, but he pays as much attention to them as he does Francis' come-ons, which is to say, very little. Francis cuts his hair, and it's started to grow out a little. It's a sort of ashy blond, flecks of brown and black at the roots and he thinks if he shaved it all off it'd probably grow back dark.

His features, overall, he thinks, are sharp. His jaw is strong, considering how long he'd kept the baby fat, and his overbite has evened out somewhat, but getting punched in the face repeatedly by pissed-off Germans would do that to you. He thinks he looks a touch on the feminine side, but he thinks it's probably because he's never shaved a day in his life.

Some nights, England lies in bed, and stares up at the ceiling. The Fae bunny sleeps minty and warm by his head, and his cat sleeps by his feet, in the space nobody ever inhabits. It's covered in cat hair, which England thinks is very telling of his private life. The only nation to have shared his bed in any form is France, and that is always at a time when another way simply won't do. Francis never oversteps his boundaries, sleeps peacefully with his back to England, and that's fine, he can deal with that. There was a time when he shared a bed with America, in the middle of the war, the Blitz knocking him senseless. America had been a precautionary measure, a solid weight keeping him safe whilst his body vainly tried to repair itself. America had been ordered under no circumstances to touch, and America hadn't, just lay by his side, one arm braced over him, and played cards with some of their boys.

Other than as a very young colony, they had never shared a bed. Arthur plans to keep it this way. The same, of course, is readily applied to the rest of the world; England has plenty of foreign relations, and not a single one involves sex. He rather likes it that way.

(Scotland tells him that unicorns are attracted to fair maidens. Virgins are their protectorate, and England seizes the opportunity, latches on tight and shouts it from the rooftops. He's a virgin because of a fucking _unicorn_. Ridicule him all you like, but he will still be a virgin, and you'll look like a prick. Whether or not Scotland told him for that purpose, England never cares to find out, doesn't much care either. Scotland is proud that his little brother is that smart, and makes sure Ireland's next curse is a little lighter in comparison.)

But for all his bed remains empty, his reputation dictates otherwise, and he is forever backing himself into a corner, and is forever looking to France to get him out of it. He hates himself for relying on the Frenchman as he does, but sometimes there is simply no other way to go about it without outing himself.

'Are you going to fucking help, or just sit there and laugh at me?'

Francis spreads his hands. 'Mostly, I'm just going to admire how you have, once again, made a mountain out of a molehill, kitten. No one gives a damn, and they are only noticing because you are making noise.'

Arthur shoots him a filthy look and continues pacing. Francis tells him to stop fidgeting, he'll undo the knot.

'But they think – they think.'

'_Breathe_,' France sighs, and sits up, rearranges the sheets around his waist. 'What do you want me to do? Tell the world that I finally got you in my bed? Make the lie a thousand times more unbelievable? They have enough trouble believing you are a virgin, and the only reason not a single one has cornered about it is because they're all too convinced that they are the only one you have never taken to your bed, and are too self-absorbed to ask each other.'

'Don't remind me!' England snaps, though it comes out more like a whine. He coughs and drops his voice again, but the lower he tries to force it, the higher it climbs. 'I know, alright! And don't fucking say anything or everyone'll just – fucking – they're just all – Francis, what do I _do_?'

'Kitten.'

'I mean, my reputation's totally shot to shit anyway, no one seriously believes I'm still a fucking _virgin_, what with the pirates and they were overrated like you wouldn't believe, more of a hindrance than a help – did you know it's really hard to hurt Antonio? I was punching him for three hours before I managed to break his nose. He's every bit as physically dense as he is mentally, and why hasn't he told everyone that my sinking his battleship wasn't a euphemism, it was a very literal thing that I did – I literally sank his battleship, France, and I went and blew holes in it with a shit load of cannons and laughed about for a week. But why hasn't anyone bothered to point out the fact that I've never shagged any of them, regardless of the situation? They won't believe that you actually got me into bed because you're just a fucking pervert with hairy arms and I'm in the _wrong fucking body_.'

France sighs and gets to his feet, curses dramatically in his native language when he trips over the end of the sheet and nearly loses it (which gets a chuckle out of Arthur, which was probably why he did it in the first place) and puts his hand on Arthur's arm. It's a warm, wide hand, calluses on the palm and scars on the fingers, though his fingertips are frozen. The hands of a baker, England knows, warm from bread and cold from pastry, and the thought of bread distracts him for a moment, heart pounding hard in his wrists when France slides his hand down to curl those cold fingers over the pulse.

'_Kitten_,' he says, that I'm-the-older-one-here-don't-fucking-argue tone he has only ever used on Arthur, and Arthur looks at him wide-eyed and feeling like he's about to cry. 'Breathe. You never _breathe_.'

Francis leans in to press their foreheads and noses together, and at this distance, the blue of Francis' eyes looks very much like waves, his eyelashes sand on the shore. England focuses hard on those eyes, feels them watch him back, the woods to the sea. There are the faintest flecks of green, the faintest flecks of yellow and grey and white, so small he thinks he's probably imagining them, but there's a whole ocean in France's eyes and Arthur breathes in, smells salt and tastes it on his tongue and knows he's crying but for a second, for one single second, he's in Dover hurling abuse at France that the taller man probably can't hear.

(In the beginning, Francis had laughed at him, called him names until he cried. He had said that he would tell everyone that England was another Hungary. To the best of Arthur's knowledge, he's done no such thing.)

He feels the pull of his waters expand his chest; fill his lungs with air, only for the tide to draw his ribs in and he's exhaling, shaky. France's eyes crinkle with a soft little smile, and he sighs, content when Arthur's breathing again, steady and careful. He keeps his hand on Arthur's pulse until it slows back to the steady tick-tock of the clock tower, and then he slides his hand back up to curl warm and secure around his shoulder.

Arthur pulls his face away, but keeps watching those waves, and very carefully, brings his hands up to touch Francis' face. Francis lets him, smiles genially, and for a second, he looks much older than he is.

'You do it to mock me, don't you?' Arthur asks, and curls his fingers to scrape his nails against the brittle edge of stubble creeping in along the long arch of Francis's chin. The rasp of keratin makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Francis snorts. 'Yes, of course, that is exactly why I don't spend an hour shaving every day. It's not that you, Feliciano and Gilbert drive me insane, phoning me at all hours of the night and forcing me to stop you from embarrassing yourselves.'

'I have never called at an unreasonable hour,' Arthur scoffs, and then adds, 'You told Italy to show Japan his arse.'

'I didn't think he'd actually _do_ it.'

Arthur has only worn a dress twice in his life. He has hated it both times and ignores it when America brings it up as a part of a new hare-brained scheme to save the world. How his and China's dressing as women would enable them to repair the ozone layer, he'll never know. He has never been more thankful that they have not sway on the government and have no power to make decisions.

Once, in the sixties, as part of a stupid mission he'd been sent on with some of his men to round up the Nazis still in hiding and bring them in for their war trials. Quite why this meant he had to dress for the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, he wasn't sure, but between that and getting found by Ludwig (a-fucking-gain) he was pretty sure being a woman for a few hours was the more preferable option. He'd slipped through the crowd and given Germany a few false trails to follow, the taller man aware that there was another nation nearby, but not sure who, and Arthur was far too good at hiding and disguising himself to be found.

The other was earlier, the forties. That fucking arse-over-tit mission that had completely fucked itself seven ways to Sunday and ended in him trapped in Italy. God he hates that mission. He had to give Germany credit though; he'd found him, despite his sneaking, and delivered him in ropes to the Italy brothers. Breaking out was easy; avoiding Germany was not. Just like the Axis Power, the British were British wherever they went. His remaining aide (the rest having been caught or, more likely, killed) was about as useful as a soggy paper towel. He'd almost blown their cover no less than fourteen times, and after getting caught twice trying to pass as an Italian man, Arthur called it quits and stole a dress.

It didn't fit so he had to go and buy one.

If he wasn't permanently like this, he thinks, pacing back and forth in fashionable shoes that he'll probably give to Belgium when he sees her, he might like not having to bind his chest. He thinks he might like growing his hair out again, if just to have France style it. Thankfully, the devastation of war is thinning him out, and even as a woman, he's not particularly feminine. He shares a table with Germany, and carefully tips his hat forward to hide his face beneath its brim. He acts natural, and Germany attempts to flirt.

(Italy admits, later, that he'd seen Arthur that day, and compliments him on fooling him and Germany both. It hadn't been until twenty years later that he realised it had been Arthur, and says that he'd like to dress him up some more, he looks good like that. Arthur politely refuses, and tries to deny ever being in a dress. Italy doesn't take it too badly, and says he's had enough of wearing a dress too. Arthur doesn't ask.)

Once or twice, Francis asks how Arthur had known he was a 'he' and not a 'she'. Arthur asks France how he knew he was a complete and total loser. France takes his point and doesn't ask again for a long while. Eventually, England shrugs idly and says that he'd never really had any doubt about it. It was something that was always there, and like Erzsébet, he'd never had any reason to doubt it. Once he saw other men – once he saw the differences between male and female bodies – he felt it, deep in his gut that there was something wrong. Until he came to understand what the difference between bodies meant, he'd never really assigned himself a gender. What was gender amongst nations, anyway?

Elizabeth had been the only monarch that dares ask him to strip. In the 1790's, on the Peninsula, fighting alongside men much bigger than him, Wellington saw him without his upper uniform.

'If you are injured,' was all he'd said on the matter, cutting over England's blustering "I can explain." 'You would do well to visit the doctors. I wouldn't wish infection upon you. Remember to change the bandages regularly. You'll make the wound worse if you don't.'

And that had been that. No questions, no worry for his nation's well-being. Just a warning about his bandages and a wicked little grin.

When he's alone, he doesn't mind not wearing his binder so much. It's not so much a question of who he is so much as he'd like to be able to fucking breathe, okay? When the only eyes that will look at him have already seen him, he doesn't see much point in wasting the extra effort fannying around with it when he can just wear baggy clothes and a sports bra. It means absolutely nothing.

Sometimes America comes to visit. It can be any number of reasons; a new video game, a horror film, paperwork, Matthew bullying him again and he wants Arthur to go and tell him off. It could be as simple as a shrug and an 'I kinda missed you, old timer.'

Arthur doesn't mind. He just wishes the boy would call ahead so he had time to present himself properly. He'd always excuse himself in the first five minutes of Alfred ringing his doorbell and rush putting himself back into his binder, which always resulted in a lot of discomfort and breathing difficulties on his part.

'I really wish you'd call ahead,' he says once.

'I like surprising you,' America shrugs. 'You're too easy to surprise.'

England shakes his head and goes to make a cup of tea, surreptitiously rearranging himself as he does.

(Sometimes Francis gets genuinely angry at him for the stress he's putting himself under trying to keep it all hush-hush and silent. He should just come out and tell everyone that his biology doesn't match up. No one would treat him differently, but they'd understand why, for the fourteenth time, he's fainted from wearing his binder too tight for thirty hours straight.

The first time Francis suggests it, Arthur spits tea everywhere and has to kneel with his head over the toilet bowl for twenty minutes before he thinks he can stand up again.)

He tries hormone therapy, once. There are a lot of ridiculous forms to fill out, and he has to come clean to his boss about it, who takes it surprisingly well. Between them, they get him in and out of America's place, and he goes through a year's worth of treatment before he turns around to his boss and looks no different.

Within hours of getting testosterone flooded through his system, it's gone, the preternatural origin of his body rejecting such a human substance.

'Really,' he says, sprawled on a couch at Number Ten, watching the cat carefully. 'I should have known better than to think it would hold. I'm drunk for a maximum of two hours, and that's on absinthe. Like fuck was testosterone holding.' He sighs. 'Worth a shot though.'

'I though absinthe was illegal now,' his boss says, and casts a disapproving look over the top of a copy of Caravan Monthly.

Arthur snorts. 'When has that ever stopped me? Larry, stop that! Control your fucking Cabinet!' e snaps at his boss, but the other shrugs.

'He's a cat,' he replies. 'He's doing his job.'

'Fuck you,' Arthur spits, and buries his face in the couch cushions.

He admits that sometimes, he overdoes it. He wears his binder for too long. He loses his voice dropping it too low. He spends so long squaring himself up that he sprains something.

Francis doesn't put up with his bullshit, argues with him until he gives in. He usually ends up in the frog's house or hotel suite until the Frenchman deems him fit enough to present himself to the public again. Sometimes he withholds his binder, knowing he won't leave without it, never mind he has more than one, not to mention back-up plans should he need it.

They've come to blows about it before, and usually France wins by sheer dint of his stronger muscles. England is smaller and lighter and faster, but France has a mean left hook and England can only dodge it so many times before it connects. They tested it once; hooking his arms and legs around one of France's arms, Arthur managed to hang, sloth-like, for fourteen seconds before France got distracted by America and dropped him.

England resigns himself to not standing a chance in a straight-up fist-fight with France and just gives in. Tactically, he's got the advantage, knowing all of Francis' weak spots and the best ways to cause as much damage in as little time, but when it comes to brute strength, Francis wins. He hates him for it, but can't really fault him for employing it.

Really though, Francis tries his best. He might have threatened to on numerous occasions, but he's never actually told anyone. If anyone has any suspicions, they've never raised them to Arthur, and if they have to Francis, he's headed them off well enough that the world continues turning.

It's kind of funny really, how the nation that should have told everyone, should have been the worst choice to keep his secret, is the one that keeps it the best.

Arthur wonders, sometimes, sitting in front of his mirror with his toes bent up against the glass with his chin on his knees, whether there will ever be a way to really change his gender.

He wonders, sometimes, whether anybody would actually care what gender he was.

But at the end of the day, he's still a man in a woman's body, and nothing's ever going to change that.

**Notes::**

The **first invasion of Britain took place in 41AD**. In 43AD, it was successful.

**Boadicea** was flogged and her daughters raped after her husband died and Rome failed to uphold an agreement made between him and her husband. She declared war.

In the **1300's**, the Black Death swept across Europe, one of the worst pandemics in history.

The **Peninsula war** is the Napoleonic, in case it wasn't clear.

There is a **cat** in Number 10 Downing Street, occupying the position of Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. At present, his name is Larry.

The **French are good bakers**. Bread chefs work better with warm hands, pastry chefs with cold.

England and **Belgium** are tight, at least in the World War era. Probably not so much now.

There are multiple ways of **binding** your chest. In the earlier days, bandages would have been common, but nowadays, a couple of sizes too small sports bras and specially-made binders seem to be the ticket. Neoprene and ace bandages are no-goes from what I've heard.

The **clock tower** is the correct name of Big Ben.

There are a couple of **English-dub shout outs** here; France's advice to Italy and the carnival are the two I remember most, though I think there might be others.

I haven't the foggiest whether Cameron reads **Caravan Monthly**, it was just the first really British magazine that came to mind. I don't know whether his boss is Cameron or not.

There was no way I was going to write an England-centric without mentioning **Elizabeth**.

**Please don't hate me too loudly, okay? If I've offended you that badly, please bring it to the PM and you can kill me there.**

**++Vince++**


End file.
